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      04-08-2015, 07:56 PM   #1
bignosejim
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My Beisan Vanos experience

Just thought that I'd post some pics and other Z4M related stuff when doing my vanos upgrades.

First of all, picking out a 24mm wrench to rotate the camshafts, make sure to get a wrench that is 9mm thick or less. I did this at the store by taking a 9mm wrench and seeing if it would around the open end of the wrench. I ended up getting a Northern Tools Klutch wrench.



I roughly measured the space between the camshaft at the hex. Just over 9mm.



The First thing I did was to remove the radiator cover and electric fan. It only takes around 10 minutes and opens up a lot of space (thanks to Kapt for the info in his thread).






I did run into some problems during the vanos rebuild, the first being my ebay crankshaft alignment pin didn't fit into the guide on the harmonic balancer. So I ended up ordering what I hope is a shorter BMW version. I called a local local dealership and gave them a tool number and they were able to cross reference that to a part number. It just shipped today and I'll post the number and some pics when it arrives. I didn't want to order an alignment pin from BMW and have to hack it in half.

Following the Beisan procedures (removing the solenoid, and the cable clip for the hood latch), I was able to remove my vanos unit without removing the inlet filter from the unit.





Nice and clean.




My next problem came when I removed the intake piston from it's cylinder. Even though I was using VERY LITTLE pressure, I managed to eject the piston from the vanos and onto my garage floor!! When you remove the pistons be sure to have your hand on the other side to catch the piston or this might happen.

Here is the aftermath! The garage floor won that contest.



Raj from Beisan is a really stand up guy with AWESOME Customer Service. He was away from the office on vacation and answered my emails, and also got a friend to stop by his shop and ended up mailing me a replacement. I should get the replacement in a couple of days.

Since I had some free time (without a crankshaft pin and waiting on an intake piston), I decided to buff up the vanos a little. Not completely done, but it is coming along nicely.











I'm also putting in some Stoptech brake pads and changing belts while the car is down.

I'll post more as I get to it.
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Last edited by bignosejim; 04-09-2015 at 08:39 AM..
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      04-09-2015, 12:04 AM   #2
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I'm enjoying the journey and learning as you and others blaze the trail.
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      04-09-2015, 06:42 AM   #3
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^whs
nice work guys (all)
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      04-10-2015, 07:36 PM   #4
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Got my replacement intake piston in the mail today!! I'm glad I went with Beisan Systems for my vanos stuff. Top notch customer service!

I also got my Crankshaft alignment pin. This one is Z4M specific from BMW. It's part number is 83300495528. Works like a champ.








Here's a shot of both of my alignment pins. My ebay special was a couple tenths of a millimeter larger diameter wise.



Unfortunately I'm not going to have time to work on my car for a few days. Hopefully I'll have it back on the road next weekend.
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      04-11-2015, 08:25 AM   #5
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Thanks, that's good to know about the shaft diameter.
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      04-17-2015, 08:27 PM   #6
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Finally got some time over the last couple of days to work on the car. Put my pump disc back together. It only took around 10 tries to get it to this point. I didn't want to work in a box, and probably got lucky I didn't lose any pump parts. The pistons won't move until they are perfectly lined up. The first three were usually pretty easy, but the last one was the one where parts would go flying.



Here it is installed back in the vanos. That only took two tries to get it in there without stuff flying. I put the whole vanos in a box for this one.



Here's my vanos unit put all back together.



Removed the splined shafts and sprocket hubs.





I already had the updated bolts in the camshaft sprocket sleeves (my build date is 12/06). They weren't loose either.



Installed some upgraded bolts from Lang Racing. They are 12.9 for the inners and 10.9 for the outer bolts. I put the inners in using Loctite 246 (high temp blue).



Removed my chain tensioner and exhaust sprocket replacing my chain guide.



Here are some shots of my really worn upper chain guide. My car has just over 51,000 miles on it.







The sprocket was pretty easy to put back since I marked the relationship of the chain and sprocket. Just have to push the bottom of the chain back into place while holding the sprocket.



Tomorrow time to rebuild the splined gears and start re-assembling everything.
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      04-19-2015, 07:58 PM   #7
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I rebuilt my splined shafts yesterday. To get the socket to seat properly, I had to tap it in with a hammer (lightly). After the initial fit I was able to fit the socket without tapping. Here are some pics.







I tried to line up the splined shafts so they would enter the hub with the least amount of rotation. As you work your way around inserting each position of the splined shaft it requires more or less rotation until you find the one that has almost no perceptible CCW movement before entering. I made a short youtube video showing this principle. It should make it really hard to get the camshaft past the maximum retard position.



Here is a pic of inserting the a splined gear. I actually inserted it farther, I was just showing the mark. You can also see the mark on the exhaust sprocket that made reassembling my chain easy.



I aslo got into timing my engine. I had everything lined up perfectly until I had to rotate one revolution to tighten the last few hub bolts. My timing wasn't off by much, but I decided to try again.

Today I tried lifting my engine to give enough clearance to install the vanos with the splined gears attached per the Beisan and new BMW procedures. Bottom line is the engine will not lift high enough to get clearance. So, I'll be doing it per TIS directions again trying to get it correct. I have noticed that depending on which TIS procedure you use, the torque varies on the hub bolts. In the adjusting camshaft timing procedure it is 10 nm (7 ftlbs). In the replacing camshaft procedure it is 14 nm (10 ftlbs). I'll be sure to post what ends up working for me.
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      04-19-2015, 10:52 PM   #8
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I measured the protrusion of the splines before taking anything apart, knowing that my timing was good before I got in there.
That way I was able to set them back to the same place and torque all the bolts, before putting the Vanos back on.
With the splines protruding <0.25", there's plenty of room to get the Vanos back on, just like it came off.

You're sticking with the stock exhaust hub?
I had the "that won't happen to me" attitude because I don't track my car and rarely go over 5500 rpm, but sure as heck, mine broke.
Maybe from all the blip shifting I do while spending way too much of my remaining life in concertina traffic.
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Last edited by StickMon; 04-20-2015 at 01:55 AM..
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      04-20-2015, 09:25 AM   #9
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I might have considered measuring my gears, but my timing was farther off than I wanted it. I have a couple of ideas on how to get it spot on. Hopefully one will pan out and I'll share it with the community.
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      04-22-2015, 07:02 PM   #10
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Finally got my car all put back together. Running smooth and quieter. The Inlet is a little off based on my vanos adaptations but I got the exhaust to within 0.4 degrees. My inlet was around 4.5 degrees off. I was still able to put the timing bridge pin in at the last step of timing, but I could tell it had moved some. One of these days I'll try again. Right now I just need to drive the car a little.

I ended up timing my engine the way Kapt timed his engine in this thread. Here are the steps I used (crankshaft locking pin inserted and engine at TDC with both cams timed so that the pin just drops into place with no effort):

1. Install the hub bolts snug tight but ensure you are able to turn the hub by hand rather easily.

2. Find the sweet spot for both gears and install them into the hub close to their initial position. Put the vanos gasket in place. Be careful with the pistons it's easy to push the exhaust too far in.

3. Connect the vanos to the hub using the long solenoid bolts for support. You don't need to install the oil inlet regulating valve at this time. Connect the intake and exhaust pistons to the splined gears. Be careful with the positioning of the pistons it's really easy for the exhaust piston to get pushed in too far to get a wrench on the hex.

4**. Tighten bolts in a plane to 14 nm by feel. I basically just tightened those bolts as tight as reasonable with a wrench. I had gotten upgraded bolts, so I wasn't worried about breaking any. You could also tighten one of the top ones also to provide some additional support for the hub.

5**. Push the vanos to the cylinder head block until the pistons bottom out. You should be a few mm away from the head at this point. Check your timing with the bridge. The pin should go through both camshafts without resistance.

** Also you could, once the splined gears are attached to the vanos unit, push the gears/pistons all the way into the vanos until you hear them bottom out. The gears may come out of the hub when you do this, just put them back in when you push the vanos to the engine. This is what I'm going to do the next time I go into my engine to fine tune the timing. I think my intake piston wasn't fully bottomed out when I did mine yesterday (hence 4.5 degree adaptation required). Once you are a few mm away from the head tighten 4 bolts in a plane to 14 nm (124 in lbs). I also think next time I do this I'll use the special spacer tool to set the distance of the vanos to the head. The more I think about this the more critical I think this relationship is. And since I already have the tool, it won't cost me anything extra.

6. Release the 4 bolts by 1/4 turn.

7. Connect the two side bolts to the vanos. They should be 10 mm hex and not star bits.

8. Tighten the two vanos side bolts 1/2 turn at a time until snug. Check timing with the bridge.

9. I put in a bottom bolt to ensure the vanos was snug against the block.

10. Tighten the top hub bolts to 14 nm (124 inlbs).

11. Unbolt the vanos (two top bolts and one bottom).

12. Tap the vanos with a soft faced hammer to free it up from the block and remove the vanos from the car so you can get access to all of the hub bolts. Torque all of the hub bolts to 124 in lbs (or 10 ft lbs or 14 nm).

13. Install the oil inlet regulator.

14. Reinstall the vanos per above steps 3 through 8. This time when putting in the top left vanos bolt you can also attach the oil accumulator line bracket and install the bottom vanos bolts.

15. Check timing with the timing bridge and ROTATE the engine and recheck the timing. I ended up rotating my engine several revolutions to ensure the timing stayed consistent. I could tell that my timing on the intake side moved a little, but I could still insert the pin. I did have less the .5mm of space between the timing bridge and the intake side of the head where it rests.

16. Continue putting things back together.

Don't forget to clear vanos adaptations before you start your car. My car didn't sound as bad as I thought after reading the warnings in the TIS procudures about making strange noises until the vanos refills itself. It started right up. A couple of minutes later I got a check engine soon light... It ended up being a misfire on cylinder 5 that was caused by the connector not being fully pushed down for the coil.
The steps are what I actually did to get my car timed, the asterisk is what I intend to do in the future to see if I can get it closer to perfectly timed so I don't need vanos adaptations for fix it for me. Keep in mind that right now all of my INPA parameters are in the green and my engine is pulling fairly strong. I'm just probably going to go a little OCD on this in a couple of weeks. I haven't had a chance to get it to redline yet. I spent my driving time bedding in some Stoptech brakes.
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      01-27-2020, 08:17 PM   #11
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bignosejim Just wanted to drop you a quick note of thanks for this thread from a few years back. It was a tremendous help to me as I wrenched on my 2006 Z4MR for the first time (other than replacing an alternator a few months back). I watched the fatboys garage video series, read the beisan manual many times, ordered most of my parts from ECSTuning, but this thread is the only thing I found which helped me to understand what exactly I needed to do which was specific to the Z4M!

As an aside, I followed the * part of your reassembly/spline insertion steps to a T. It worked exactly as you thought it would... essentially allowing you to reattach the spline gears to the vanos pistons with the vanos unit already seated beneath the chassis cross brace.

I didn't reset vanos adaptations, but did fire it up and let it idle for 2-3 minutes... no lights, smooth purring idle...

This was all preventative work on my part... here's a quick rundown of what I did on my almost 54k miles ride: replaced vanos solenoid with beisan upgrade, vanos seals, beisan oil pump disk, cam bolts, upper chain guide, valve seals, went ahead and shimmed the valves (3 were out), and new plugs.

Hope you are still enjoying the hell out of your Z4M... I know that I am!
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      01-28-2020, 01:30 AM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MadGus View Post
I didn't reset vanos adaptations, but did fire it up and let it idle for 2-3 minutes...
Keep driving her like this without reseting VANOS.. at least for a while
It's so much fun, like a permanent sport mode or even better
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      01-28-2020, 01:42 AM   #13
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oh man ive missed this forum!!! Great thread!!
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